


Asphodel

by vyatka



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, BuckyNat Secret Santa, F/M, Gen, Ghosts, Monsters, Shapeshifters - Freeform, Small Towns, Witches, surreality, the violence warning is to be on the safe side it's not awful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 08:13:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13360263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vyatka/pseuds/vyatka
Summary: Only two things have ever changed in the Red Town:Just now, when the dog wandered down from the taiga.And years before, when Natasha wandered up to it.





	Asphodel

**Author's Note:**

> [nxctis-lucis](http://nxctis-lucis.tumblr.com/) 's third prompt: _Up to you! You have that idea in your mind and you never find the opportunity to draw it/write it? Now is the moment, I would love to see your talent come alive._

Nothing has ever changed inside of the red town, but every year the wind rises in the north and blows the ghosts down from Siberia, and every year Natasha sees them. No one else will feed them, so she leaves dead spiders in her driveway, along with a handful of knucklebones she collected from last year.

None of them linger.

Ghosts cannot; it is part of being a ghost. The strong ones claw down to the underworld, and if they were lucky enough to die with a weapon, they’ll fight their way through a stalactited underworld until they find the end of it. Natasha knows only because ghosts talk to her. Or they talk, and she hears. Mostly they talk about dull things. Natasha’s starved for conversation. No one in the red town will show their face around her, because she is a witch.

Liho winds herself around Natasha’s ankles, unafraid of the wolves lounging on the porch. There are five, female; they are named after famous Russian ballerinas; they came down from the mountains a few years ago and stayed.

Stove, mutters a ghost. I turned the stove off?

Yes, Natasha thinks. You turned the stove off. All of you turned your stoves off.

It is then that she notices the black dog, and laughs. “I’m sorry that you’re here.”

***

This is the truth about Natasha: she is a witch, but she didn’t ask to be, and she wasn’t born one. She wasn’t born in the red town, either, where it is never winter despite being in the north of Russia, but she was brought here when she was a tiny white infant too small to walk, and left at the side of the road when the ghosts paraded past, and it was either become a witch or become one of them.

These are the other truths about Natasha: her hair is red, and long, and wild, and unkempt, burred and matted. She’s fortunate enough that the color’s never gone dull, despite the times she’s gone weeks without washing it. “Bird’s nest” applies both literally and figuratively. Her teeth are sharp as a she-wolf’s. And as yellow. She can talk to feral animals in most of their own languages, read the skies to track the birds, and ink tattoos into herself with nothing but soot and a knife. She’s never seen a movie or listened to a song she didn’t sing herself. It’s sad.

She sits down to smoke with the wolves and eyes the black dog. “You want one?” she rasps.

God, but it’s a huge, shaggy thing, blue-eyed and half-lupine, and one of its legs, she notices, is clockwork and iron. It probably has fleas. That’s fine. So does she.  
Its tongue lolls, eyes darting to the wolves behind her.

“They won’t hurt you. Not while I’m here. Not that I think you’re not capable of defending yourself. James.” Natasha’s eyes twinkle, amused. “Lover boy.”

It closes its mouth.

“You came here just to see if I’d recognize you, and I did.” As if she’d forget what he looks like in this skin, a mongrel with mismatched ears – one up and one down – and fangs far whiter than her own, and a collar made of the same iron as his left foreleg. “Idiot. If you wanted to see me, you could just say so.”

My son shouldn’t marry her, says a ghost. The dog glances at her, sniffs even though there is nothing to smell, and goes back to looking at Natasha. I tried so hard to put off that wedding.

“Do they know you’re here?”

It blinks at her. 

“Then we don’t have a lot of time,” she says, mournful. “Come on.”

It rises to its mismatched feet, giant shag of a tail wagging loosely, and trots, massive-strided, past her, up the porch, through the screen door as she opens it, and once it’s inside, it’s no longer an it, but a man. He’s tall, although not so tall that she can’t look into his eyes, and he’s muscular as a Clydesdale, and she loves him.

“Natalia,” he says, uncertain, after a moment. He is not the dog, but in her mind’s eye, she can see the dog standing in the same place, ears half-back, hesitant. “I wasn’t sure. If I could come.”

They both remember what happened the last time they saw each other.

Natasha hadn’t expected to ever see either of them again, him or the dog; the last time she’d seen him, the dog had been in chains, crammed into a crate half its size, snarling with broken eyeteeth. She had barely escaped with her life.

“Drink?” she rasps.

“Natalia,” he says, swallowing. “I need your help.”

She knows he won’t bite, because his canine teeth are missing, making his smile, which was always boyishly endearing, somehow better. Sweeter. Anything they do to the dog affects him. “Yes,” she says. “Okay.”

As a man, he’s as shaggy and unkempt as the dog is, and so he matches her. His hands, one metal and one flesh, disappear into her red nest of hair, but he doesn’t kiss her. The first time he’d kissed her, Natasha hadn’t kissed anyone for real, only pretended at it, and hadn’t been sure what to expect a real kiss to feel like.

His feels like this: rough and soft and good, and gaping where his canine teeth are missing.

“Your hair was yellow,” he says. “A few days ago.”

She struggles to remember. “Yes,” she admits. “I wanted it to change. But it turned red again.” Natasha rolls one of her rings between her thumb and forefinger. Because nothing ever changes, here. It’s a terrible limbo.

Only two things have ever changed in the Red Town:

Just now, when the dog wandered down from the taiga.

And years before, when Natasha wandered up to it. She still say couldn’t why it had happened, only that one day the wind had grabbed her and pulled her north, and she’d walked that way, shivering and alone, and walked until she found it. And him. And the others. The other girls, and the other dogs.

He had been the dog a lot more than he had been anything else, back then.

“You remember your name?” she asks him.

“Remembered yours first.”

Natasha frowns, clenches her jaw, and rolls her ring faster. “Tell me yours.”

He seems aware that he’s spooked her, by the way that he shifts on his feet, apologetic. “James,” he says. “I know that. I didn’t mean to make you. Ah. Nervous.” That’s true. He’s an awful liar. She’s much better than he is. At lying.

He is restless. He won’t sit. She wonders if kissing her would make him relax.

“I’m sorry.” It grates out of him. “I shouldn’t – “ All the self-assuredness he had when he was the dog seems to fall right out of him. Natasha watches, mildly amused, mildly distressed. She maybe hasn’t processed it yet.

James looks up, coated in shame – why? And that’s when she sees it. That one of his eyes is wrong, wrong as the red sky. It’s not his. Not blue. It’s silver, like his arm, and when she sees it she lashes out. It’s fast. He’s unprepared. It’s with knifelike speed that she strikes, hurling him groundward. Language spills out of her, some of it Russian, some of it English. No, she shouts, and curse words, and witch words. They can’t – they can’t – get out of him, get out of him, let him go -

“Tasha.” Her pet name. “They’re not inside.” He takes a breath, somewhat pained, since she’s sitting on his chest. Her knife is inches from his throat. Both eyes, the right and the wrong, slide to the side, where the wolves have tensed, glancing from him to Natasha and back.

She’s not so easily convinced. She’s seen what they can do, up in the taiga. “I can’t trust that,” she rasps. “You understand, I can’t trust that.”

Can she kill him? She doesn’t want to. She couldn’t. She couldn’t bear to watch him become one of the ghosts, if the dogs even can become ghosts. Natasha doesn’t know if he has a soul, or if she does, either.

But he’s not fighting. And her knife wavers. That’s enough.

James appears to teeter between crying and sighing, and chooses neither. “It’s just the eye,” he whispers. “I need. Your help. To get it out.”

Just like that, the fear saps out of her.

“Oh, James,” she says. “Oh, James.”

The admonition never to speak to a silver-eyed bird – or cat, or horse, or dog – chimes against the back of her skull. If they have his other eye, then they’re watching. They can see.

“I’m supposed to bring you back,” James whispers. Natasha’s clockwork heart thuds. She takes a step back, and he takes a step forward, hunching his shoulders as if to apologize for his space. She will kill him, maybe. Even if she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to. She won’t, if she can help it.

“I – “ he starts, and glances around, and that’s all the dog, the animal flit of his gaze. 

Outside, a ghost skitters. It is soundless. But she can feel it dart forward, startled, because the ghosts, while they cannot see the living, can see the dogs. The dogs are halfway between the living and the dead.

“Did you bring them here?” rasps Natasha. Along with it – I won’t go back. They can’t drag me. They can drag my corpse, maybe, but not me."

“I didn’t know if they would come.”

Her knife is still in her hand.

James looks at it. “Please fix it.”

Natasha breathes a breath, very calm, and places it against the base of his socket, the top of his cheek. “Are you ready?” She hopes that her voice is reassuring.

He nods, leaning into her hand.

Natasha pulls it back, once, and stabs him in the eye. Her lips crimp; is it less or more chilling that he doesn’t scream at all, barely makes a sound? She has to work faster, now – as soon as they can’t see her, they’ll know. They’ll know she knows. And they’re coming. They’re coming.

She mutters an apology, cupping his cheek to catch the blood. “It’s going to hurt,” she says, whispering, and dips in to press a soft kiss to his nose. “Sorry.”

Her finger hooks around and pops the traitorous silver eye out. A sound almost forces out of James’ throat.

Liho sniffs at it and bats with her paw.

“We have to go.” Natasha can almost smell the rot of wet fur that has torn through the trees. James nods. The blood drips down his face. He takes her small hand in his metal one, and they run.

**Author's Note:**

> I know this work is slightly different from the theme of this event, but this plot bunny has been lurking in the back of my head for a while. It's not very cheerful, but I hope you liked it nonetheless. Please leave comments/kudos if you did! 
> 
> Inspiration for this was pulled largely from _Lips Touch: Three Times_ by Laini Taylor, which is a fantastic read if you like fantasy and lovers and spOoky anything. Everything I've ever done has been inspired by Laini Taylor. I owe Laini Taylor my life. 
> 
> Anyway! Happy Holidays to the Buckynat family, and to nxctis-lucis, who I hope liked this!


End file.
